BLOGMay 11, 2017

Navy SEAL Who Killed Bin Laden Talks With Glenn: 'We Knew It Was a One-Way Mission'

Robert O'Neill --- American hero, former Navy SEAL and author of the new book The Operator: Firing The Shots That Killed Osama Bin Laden And My Years As A SEAL Team Warrior --- joined Glenn in studio to talk about the incredible mission that ended the life of Osama bin Laden. The honor and heroism displayed by the SEAL team that took out bin Laden becomes even more amazing knowing each team member believed --- and accepted --- it would end their lives.

Here's what O'Neill had to say about their reasons for going:

I knew it was a one-way mission, and most of the guys there did too. But we accepted it because we had the conversation, we're doing this for the single mom who dropped her kids off at school on a Tuesday morning and then 45 minutes later jumped to her death out of the Windows On The World because that was a better alternative than 2,500 degrees fahrenheit inside, holding her skirt down as her last gesture of human decency so no one could see her underwear as she killed herself. You know, she wasn't supposed to do that. The people on Flight 93 that took over the cockpit to crash it in Pennsylvania to save people in Washington. You know, they didn't need to fight. The people in the Pentagon. We went for them because that wasn't their fight. The Port Authority, the police department, NYPD, FDNY. You know, that day, we were asked to take out the guy that funded that, that laughed about it, that thought it was part of his time on earth. We went for that, so we accepted the one-way mission.

The sentiments expressed by O'Neill did not go unnoticed.

"The reason why we cry when our military goes by --- at least, you know, some of the country does -- is because of the honor behind it," Glenn said. "At least me, I get teary-eyed because of the honor behind it. The idea that we can be better than we are today."

In addition to serving his country with honor and distinction, Robert O'Neill launched Your Grateful Nation, a nonprofit dedicated to matching the unique skills of Special Operations veterans with corporate careers, transitioning them from military service to civilian life.

The Operator: Firing The Shots That Killed Osama Bin Laden And My Years As A SEAL Team Warrior is available in bookstores everywhere.

GLENN: Hello, America. And welcome to the program. Glad you're here. We've got a lot to talk about. We've spent the last hour talking about James Comey and Donald Trump. This is turning into a very big nightmare. Apparently, this decision was not made because of the emails from the Justice Department. Those emails, Donald Trump asked them to write. This has been a decision that had been a long time coming, and it looks like for personal reasons, the president has a severe problem with leakage in the -- in the West Wing. The Washington Post has 30 sources on the story that are not saying good things. This is -- this is really not good.

The reason why I bring up the long-time coming -- and it wasn't a snap decision. I think the easiest decision to make in -- in my lifetime, that I've seen a president struggle over, was President Obama struggling over the decision to kill Osama bin Laden. What did it take him, six months or something like that? And finally they were like, "Mr. President, yes or no?" The guy who was there and fired the shot, the operator, Robert O'Neill, is here. Firing the shots that killed Osama bin Laden. And his years as a SEAL team warrior. He has been involved in some of the -- the biggest stories of the last ten or 15 years. And a lot of people don't know all the things that he has done. The guy who has helped the shape the world we live in today. O'Neill joins us right now.

(music)

GLENN: Robert O'Neill. How are you, sir?

ROBERT: I'm well. Thanks for having me here, Glenn.

GLENN: The Operator is the book. Firing the Shots That Killed Osama bin Laden.

I want to -- first, let's just talk a little bit about the country as you see it today. And we don't need to get into politics. We just need to -- I just want to get your sense of, as a guy who has seen countries -- and I know -- you know, I know Special Forces think about and train for -- for countries coming apart at the seams. Are we a country getting more healthy, or less healthy?

ROBERT: I think we're getting healthier now, as far as foreign policy. I worked under President Obama -- I'm sorry, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. And what I've seen -- what I did see over the past few years is the weakening of American leadership overseas. And that's not just -- that affects the entire country, because if our allies see we're not strong, they're going to back down too. And you have instances with China building the islands, you have the Crimea thing with Russia. You've got North Koreans. Everyone is kind of moving ahead because there wasn't a threat of deterrence. I'm not saying we need to go to war, but we definitely need the deterrent, to be able to say, we will do this, if you keep doing this. We lost it for a while.

GLENN: Yeah, I think the most impressive thing this president has done foreign policy-wise is Syria. I think that woke the president up, "Oh, wait. Wait. Wait. This guy means it. He's not just going to sit around." And we've restored a little bit of -- I mean, I think the president of the United States always needs to be a best friend to everybody, unless you are on the wrong side.

ROBERT: Well, yeah. And I think he's doing it the right way too. I mean, he's going to do something up front, and then possibly negotiate in the back. Like the strikes in Syria weren't because we're going to invade you now. It's like, look, we got your attention. Now maybe we're going to do something about it.

GLENN: What should we do in North Korea?

ROBERT: North Korea is -- I think needs to be something done from within, more of an agency thing. As a special operator, I had trouble in Afghanistan blending in, in Afghanistan.

GLENN: No. Long hair, blue eyes?

ROBERT: If we had been in Scotland, I might have been okay. But in North Korea and just with the logistics needed to get in, you're going to have a difficult time. So we're going to need something with an infiltration, hopefully a military coup. Because as the world gets smaller with social media and the internet, the North Korean people are starting to realize, wait a minute. We've been lied to for generations with Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il. And then this guy, Kim Jong-un, believing they're gods and having the people believe they're gods. That's what they're doing right now.

GLENN: How bizarre is it going to be to those people?

ROBERT: Well, they don't know any better. You only know what you're taught. I mean, I've been in places in Afghanistan where I might as well have been in the tenth century in some of these valleys. Not only do they not know how old they are, they don't know what time is. And that's -- that's in valleys. North Korea, I don't even imagine. The starvation, the slave labor, all the stuff that's normal to them, because they're taught propaganda.

GLENN: What's the most concerning -- geopolitically concerning thing to you right now?

ROBERT: It's got to be North Korea with the nukes, if they get intercontinental ballistic missiles. That's a problem.

GLENN: If we go to war with them -- if it comes down to, we have to go in and try to take them out, what does Seoul look like, day two?

ROBERT: I think Seoul is going to be a hit, but hopefully with some of the new air defenses we have might work. But it's the whole thing. What if they shoot a missile at you? We'll shoot it down. Okay. What if they shoot 10,000 missiles at you? Something is going to get through. That's a tough one too. And, again, hopefully it doesn't come to a war in Korea. We've seen what happens before. I mean, thankfully, our military is designed to fight big armies, and they'll do it really, really well. But with, now something needs to be with the sanctions imposed by China because they're their biggest trade partner. But it needs to go further because China won't enforce them. If we put sanctions on North Korea and someone is trading with them, then you need to put sanctions on those people that are not enforcing the sanctions. So hopefully it won't come to a war, but Kim Jong-un is a nut.

GLENN: You know, Russia said summer before last that we're already in World War III. He said this to a group of European reporters. And he said, you guys have to convince your leadership -- I've been begging to stay out of war. We're already in World War III. And it's happening digitally.

ROBERT: Putin is saying that?

GLENN: Putin is saying that.

ROBERT: Yeah, he's still mad about the Cold War. Because he's KGB. He been out of it the whole time. He wants that back. So he kind of wants to be at war because there hasn't been a reason for him not to be.

GLENN: But we are -- we are in a cyber war.

ROBERT: Cyber war, no doubt. We're having everything stolen from us.

GLENN: How concerned are you that -- that that's -- I mean, that's -- that is a weapon of mass destruction in the wrong hands.

ROBERT: Sure it is. Uh-huh.

GLENN: How concerned are you that we're not really -- the world is not really paying attention to any of the rules on cyber warfare?

ROBERT: They're not paying any attention. But I'm just hopeful eventually that when we need to take the gloves off, we have people smart enough to do it. We've proven it before with technology. But now we kind of back off because we want this big global society and make sure everyone is equal.

I mean, once -- I mean, when we get into electronic, eventually magnetic warfare, whatever is out there. Hypersonic aircraft. I don't know what's going to happen. You know, I just -- I've been to war a bunch of times. I hope it doesn't come to it. It's not pretty. It's very fast and permanent.

GLENN: Yesterday, I had a guy on who he wrote the book Homo Deus. And it is about how man is becoming god and is going to merge with machines and everything else. And he said, we are -- we're seeing this already. The military is leading the way to where it doesn't take necessarily a massive army. You can do it --

ROBERT: Oh, yeah.

GLENN: You can do it through the air. You can do it through drones. You can do it through robots and everything else. And he said, "You know, 20 years from now, Army will not be the same. You don't need all those bodies."

ROBERT: No. You probably won't. I was reading an article on the way here today that side the biggest problem with unmanned cars -- driverless cars is human drivers.

GLENN: Right.

ROBERT: If there were no human drivers, it would be fine. It wouldn't be a problem.

GLENN: Correct. Seriously, the problem with humanity is humans.

ROBERT: Yeah, it is. That's a good point.

GLENN: Right.

ROBERT: Well, I've been to four-way stop signs here in Dallas too. I can see what they're saying.

GLENN: Yeah.

ROBERT: That can be an evolution --

GLENN: Yeah, I know. So what does -- what does that do to the mentality, when there is no life to a country like ours? We can just pay for everything and just keep going. There's no life being expended. Does that bother you at all?

ROBERT: That's a lot to grasp. I think it does bother me once you lose the human element. And we're seeing it now with everyone's -- their faces in their phones. Humanity is kind of going -- I don't know. I haven't thought about it that deeply. But if we got wars with machines, eventually they're going to turn on us, we'll have a Terminator type thing going on. Spooky.

JEFFY: You've seen it in action with your military training, has gotten far superior with help from drones --

ROBERT: Oh, yeah. Drones. Lasers. Night vision. Part of the reason we were so successful in combat wasn't necessarily that we wanted it more. Because we're fighting people that know that if they die at our hands, they go to heaven. There's no doubt about it. We just happened to have the lights off, night vision, and lasers. And we're quieter --

JEFFY: Right.

GLENN: And the lasers -- that technology is -- you can paint people, and nobody sees it.

ROBERT: Nobody sees it. Not only that, you can line up an entire room with a floodlight that has a dot in the middle. I've come around corners lit up and have bad guys trying to ambush. And you're like, "Are you kidding me right now?" It's like playing paint ball with my sister. She's not great at paint ball. I was a SEAL for a while.

GLENN: Right.

STU: That's not a game you want to enter into.

ROBERT: No, that's not.

GLENN: I don't think I'm playing paint ball as a guy with SEALs.

ROBERT: We've had them before. Speaking with kids, some of this technology, especially the games they play. I've had kids come up to me and start talking about guns. And because of the games they play, they know more about the guns that I used in combat, to the point they're asking me about, how was the trigger shaved? And I'm like, I don't know, kid. It makes this sound when you shoot someone. Would you leave me alone?

(laughter)

That's pretty funny.

GLENN: Do you think the next generation will be better at killing? I mean, you've read -- I'm sure you've read On Killing?

ROBERT: Yeah. I have. I think probably because a lot of the internet stuff, they're not as sensitive to it. I mean, even with the horrible videos ISIS puts out -- I remember the first beheading video, even before Zarqawi did it. There was -- and I remember seeing it, thinking, that's the most horrific thing I've ever seen.

Now there's so much of it. It's like, oh, another beheading video. Oh, I mean, oh, another suicide bomber. Think about that. Suicide bomber. They're getting desensitized.

And I think a lot of it is the internet. And they might not be as good at it when it's up close, but it seems like it doesn't mean as much.

GLENN: My charity, Mercury One, moved 6,000 people out of Syria and Iraq. Christians and Yazidis. We moved them. 6,000. And we've started a program over there, to where we are going back in and using operators on the ground, not Americans, but people like you, to go in and rescue these moms and children that have been taken. And I just got a report last week that said, the things they were doing to these moms and children, it's a new generation now.

It's just like you said. It was one of the most horrific things they had ever seen. Now, it's the next generation. And I was told, it's beyond your imagination, on how evil.

ROBERT: It's evil. And it's so bad that people won't want to hear it. They won't want to know about it. They pretend it's not there. Even now, it's worth going in, just getting back on ISIS, it's worth going in and wiping them out because of when our kids -- our grandkids will have to fight. I always bring up, if you haven't seen the videos of they call it the cubs of the caliphate. They're these 5-year-old kids that are executing people in horrific ways.

If we don't stop that, what do you think those kids are going to be like in 13 years? Will they be normal?

They're executioners at five. And we'll just kick the can down the road. I hate that analogy. But okay, grandkids, have fun fighting the jihad. You know, it's a real thing.

GLENN: You were part of the rescue attempt to get Marcus Luttrell.

ROBERT: Yes. I was part of the coalition. A lot of us in different places. But we run the airfield when the rescue helicopters went to get him and were shot down. And I actually saw them come back. They were survivors of the second. A turbine 34, I believe, that survived. And then they had us walk in. So we spent about two and a half days awake walking -- we knew -- we knew the trail was missing. We thought Axelson (phonetic) was missing, and we didn't know if there were survivors. So we were walking -- it's like 120 degrees, walking through the mountains of Kunar Province. And that was my first deployment with the lead SEAL team.

GLENN: So when you go in there -- tell me the difference between trying to save that SEAL team and what you think it might have been like to save -- what his name that deserted --

ROBERT: Bowe Bergdahl. I attempted to rescue him too. I was on the base when he walked off too.

GLENN: So tell me the difference between those two.

ROBERT: Well, the difference was Marcus and his crew were in there on a noble mission, trying to kill -- trying to capture/kill Ahmad Shah, a Taliban leader in the neighborhood. They got into a fight, they could handle themselves. They were in there because they wanted to be there. It was noble. And then the rescue attempt was to get in the fight. Really good guys getting in the fight. It got shot down with whatever they say shot them down. And it's something that we want to do with Bergdahl. We know he walked off the day he walked off. The way that we used to work, we'd wake up when the sun was going down. Grab your coffee. Go listen to the brief. And then you start -- you work overnight and then go to bed, you know, during the day.

When we got up that one day, they said, hey, we had this private walk off base, and he got rolled up by the Taliban. And we had to stop the entire war effort and stopped trying to hit high-value individuals and go after this guy, trying to just get intelligence on the fly, always moving.

We were so close to the point to where I actually had the ransom in my hands, that the Taliban paid, to fail me to get rid of Bergdahl, to buy him. But the difference there was that we knew that we're going after this loon -- just misguided deserter. And Luttrell was a hero.

GLENN: So, yeah, you knew he was a deserter.

ROBERT: The second it happened.

GLENN: The second it happened?

ROBERT: Oh, yeah. I mention it in my book. There's stuff that was said, that we were intercepting traffic about how the Taliban really wanted him because they just wanted to abuse him. And that we found this guy on the side of the road. He walked off. We knew he walked off. We spent days -- I think 19 attempts, my team had. We lost one of our dogs on it. He got shot and killed in a gunfight, but I know some soldiers were killed in other attempts to rescue Bergdahl.

GLENN: So how did you -- how do you deal with that?

ROBERT: With?

GLENN: How do you deal with, you know -- how do you deal not -- be frank with you. Not beating the snot out of Bergdahl?

ROBERT: Well, we didn't get him. If we did, we would have wanted to. But it would be important to --

GLENN: To not.

ROBERT: To get him back. Well, you can't. I mean, he's an American. He's an idiot. That's -- being an idiot is not a crime. But deserting is.

GLENN: Yeah.

ROBERT: So we'd want to bring him back and have him properly punished.

GLENN: Because he wasn't treated like he was a criminal.

ROBERT: No. He -- well, he got his punishment with the Taliban. He had -- you know, he got his punishment in their custody. Yeah, but when they came back, they made it political. They wanted to -- you know, he's a hero. He's a distinguished --

GLENN: How did that make you feel?

ROBERT: It was terrible. I mean, the name Bergdahl, when we -- we knew who he was, we know what he was, a misguided deserter. But when they -- they even tried to change it over the course of the years to, well, he didn't desert. He fell back on a patrol, and they grabbed him. Which was not the case at all. He walked -- he mailed the stuff home. He walked off. No question. But they spun it politically like you can imagine politicians will do.

GLENN: Back in just a second. The name of the book is The Operator. O'Neill: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior. Back with him in just a second.

First, our sponsor this half-hour is Goldline. South Korea's policy on North Korea, about to get a major overhaul. First day in office, the new South Korean president is talking about going to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong-un. I guess that's a little harder than he expected. New satellite images have discovered artificial islands northwest of the North Korean capital now. We believe that they may be missile launch sites. God only knows what's going to happen in North Korea. Hopefully nothing. But if we do go to war, it is not going to be a war like -- let me ask you, Robert, is this another Afghanistan or Iraq?

ROBERT: No. I don't think Korea would be.

STU: Say it again.

ROBERT: I don't think it would be like Iraq. It's going to be something way different. A bigger army, initially. And hopefully, the -- when -- if it was liberated -- if and when it's liberated, the population would realize, okay. This is a good thing, and you're going to get democracy. But you never know with the way they were raised. I mean, we thought it with the Shia. We kind of ditched in the first Gulf War. And the second one, they didn't rise up. And it's a tough one to read the future. I wonder where they're getting that island technology though. It's almost like they have Chinese neighbors.

GLENN: Yeah, that's what I'm concerned about is Russia, China, Iraq. A global meltdown on this one.

[break]

GLENN: Tomorrow, on this program, at this time, this hour, the top of the hour, at five minutes after the hour, tomorrow, we will be joined by Bill O'Reilly in his first interview since leaving Fox. We have a lot to talk to him about. That is tomorrow. Bill O'Reilly in his first interview, leaving Fox.

The operator is with us today. He is O'Neill. Firing the shots that killed Osama bin Laden. We were just talking about Bowe Bergdahl. And you said that you had the ransom in your hands. Was that --

ROBERT: We were near the base. He was on a base that we were on. And he walked off to one of the nearby satellite bases. The small operating post. And when they told us he was gone, we just started launching from there. Our strike team from our SEAL team. And we just started going after -- gathering Intel. And based on what we found on certain targets, we'd go after the next and the next, for a matter of days.

And we got to a point where we got into a house. Big pile of cash. Obviously, some shady characters in there. And the whole, well, my son works construction in Dubai, so he sent these millions and millions of rupees or whatever they were up there. So we had that. We were convinced that was it. We knew we were close, and then they eventually got him across the border to Pakistan.

GLENN: So that ransom was paid by --

ROBERT: The Taliban. To the locals. To take --

GLENN: Isn't that --

ROBERT: I think a lot of it is illegal.

STU: You just saw -- so you saw the payment actually? That's incredible.

ROBERT: We secured an area. Separated the people like we do. And then we went through the stuff. And there's a pile of cash. And part of the trail where Bergdahl was going and had been. It's pretty obvious what the money is doing there. They don't need that money there.

JEFFY: Right.

STU: It could have been bitcoin investment.

GLENN: Which is paying off right now.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Paying off really well.

Okay. Back to talk a little bit -- more on his book on killing Osama bin Laden. What that was like. How it was -- what it felt like to be told, hey, by the way, you guys are on your own. Something happens.

And a little bit about what he's doing now to -- to continue to pay in to America. The Operator is the name of the book. O'Neill. Back in a minute.

[break]

GLENN: O'Neill was raised in Montana. Joined the Navy at 19 in 1996. Deployed as a Navy SEAL more than a dozen times. Four hundred combat missions. Four different theaters of war. He was decorated more than 52 times. He's received two silver stars. Four bronze stars with valor. Holy cow. Joint service accomodation medal with valor. Three presidential unit citations. And a Navy Marine Corps accommodation metal with valor. Kind of a big deal.

Lone survivor. He was part of that mission to save Marcus Luttrell. "Captain Phillips" and the Somali pirates, which we're not going to get into today, but it's in his new book called The Operator. I'd love to hear about that. That is one of the most remarkable shooting I've ever seen.

ROBERT: Just getting there from a kiss on my daughter's forehead in her preschool for an Easter Tea Party, to the Indian Ocean in less than 16 hours. Because they let us know then. Then they called us out. And then we're out. Then we're over there. Then we rescued them on Easter.

GLENN: And then -- probably the -- if somebody would have actually gone in and killed Adolf Hitler, those guys would have been known as, you know -- known forever, that story would have been told.

The killing of Osama bin Laden is probably that big. And our president had a hard time deciding whether to do it or not. When you guys went in, it's my understanding, he said, don't call the State Department. You're on your own. If things go wrong, you're on your own. Is that true?

ROBERT: I'm not sure how it went down with that. I know that -- we had talks among the group, what would happen if we ran out of fuel and had to negotiate our ways out. Who were they going to send over to Islamabad to talk with Zardari (phonetic)? Who's going to do what? There's a lot of stuff that we compartmentalized, as far as, we know this, and we know that. We don't need to get involved with the politics.

GLENN: So -- but you went over there, fully expecting to die.

ROBERT: We knew -- I knew it was a one-way mission, and most of the guys there did too. But we accepted it because of -- we had the conversation. You know, we're doing this for the single mom who dropped her kids off at school on a Tuesday morning, and then 45 minutes later jumped to her death out of the windows on the World because that was a better alternative than 2500 degrees Fahrenheit inside, you know, holding her skirt down as her last gesture of human decency, so no one could see her underwear as she killed herself. You know, she wasn't supposed to do that.

The -- the people on Flight 93 that took over the cockpit, to crash it in Pennsylvania to save people in Washington. You know, they didn't need to fight people the people in the Pentagon. We went for them because that wasn't their fight. The Port Authority Police Department. The NYPD. FDNY. You know, that day, we were asked to take out the guy that funded that, that laughed at it. That thought it was part of his time on earth. We went for that. So we accepted the one-way mission.

STU: Because this is your life at stake here?

ROBERT: Yes.

STU: Is it offensive when you hear, say, Joe Biden say this is the most difficult decision in 500 years? I mean, this is -- this is -- if you had only a 1 percent chance of success and you knew there was a 99 percent chance that you were going to do to die, would you have still wanted to go on --

ROBERT: Dying didn't mean we didn't succeed. We knew that if -- I even moved myself from the perimeter to that rooftop team that was going to land there. And we called ourselves the martyr's brigade. Tongue in cheek, because once we get on the rooftop, the whole building is going up. But we're going to --

GLENN: You thought they would blow it up?

ROBERT: He would blow it up. If anyone is going to kill himself in a house-borne improvise explosive device, it's Osama bin Laden. But we accepted that because we got him. I mean, it's better -- it's -- we're going to die eventually. And we might as well get this guy for everybody else.

STU: Jeez.

GLENN: Okay. So you climbed up a stairwell. And you come to the third floor. And you say you come around the corner. And there standing in front of you is a guy who is skinnier.

ROBERT: Skinnier than I thought and taller. But how I got there was incredible. Because we didn't land where we were supposed to -- I was sort of in the back, and I watched my team work. And watching other guys knowing this is their last day on earth, watching them still do their jobs, methodically, slow and smooth. Smooth as (sic) fast. Get through this door. Get through that door. Went up the stairs. Cleared some more rooms. And then when we finally got to the top, I was right in the front with one guy in front of me. And he went up the stairs, knowing there were suicide bombers. He opened up a curtain and jumped on what he thought was suicide bombers. So I watched a guy jump on the grenade. It didn't go off. And that's historically heroic. He did that. And I turned the corner, just based on -- it's not like I came through the skylight and saved the day. I just did what every other special operator would have done. And there was Bin Laden. And he's taller, 6-3, skinnier, short beard, gray nose. That's his nose. He's a threat. He's not surrendering.

GLENN: And he's standing behind his wife.

ROBERT: Behind his wife. And he's sort of pushing her towards me. And he's a matter of feet away.

GLENN: How far?

ROBERT: Three or 4 feet. Just standing right there, and basically in the doorway. And just based on his movement -- he's not surrendering. He is a suicide bomber. And I need to treat him like a suicide bomber. That's why I shot him in the head. And I've dealt with suicide bombers before. There's stories in the book. It's so big and loud, and it's over fast. That if you don't shoot them in the head, you're going to die with them. And it was over before it started. I shot him.

GLENN: Did he have a vest?

ROBERT: No, he didn't. But I thought he did. He wasn't surrendering.

GLENN: All right. So you shoot him in the head. It's not like in the movies. They don't go flying back on the bed.

ROBERT: He fell straight down. His head went -- as I was looking at the bed, right to the bottom left-hand part of the bed -- his wife was there. And we just -- I grabbed her to move her aside. Gave her a brief search. Sat her on the bed. And I remember looking over, and his son was standing there. Like a 3-year-old. And I remember as a father just thinking, this poor guy has got nothing to do with this. And I picked him up and then moved him. And at that point, other SEALs are coming in the room. And that's when it kind of hit me. And a buddy came up to me and laughed. And he goes, are you all right? And I was like, yeah. What do we do now? And he smiled. And said, well, now we find the computers. You've done this hundreds of times. I'm like, yeah, you're right. I'm back. And he goes, yeah, bro. You just killed Bin Laden, so your life just changed. And we did the rest of our clearance. Found what we could electronically.

GLENN: What happened to his body?

ROBERT: We put it in a body bag. We carried him out on a helicopter. Brought him back and showed him to the admiral. Some of the analysts. Brought him to another spot. The FBI did a lot of DNA tests on him and photos. We handed him off to some rangers. They flew him out to the Persian Gulf and then disposed of him. That was it. It was a good call too. People ask about that too. And I get all the wild conspiracy theories about he was this and he was that. And you didn't kill him.

GLENN: I'm telling you, he's in the freezer next to Walt Disney, and the Jungle Book crew is right there. That's what's happening.

You've started a -- you've started a 501(c)(3).

ROBERT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: You've started a mission. It's -- your charity is YourGratefulNation.org. What is it?

ROBERT: Yes. I got out of the Navy at about 17 years, which is three years shy of a pension. And I realized how difficult you think it is to find a job. Because all you know is what you're doing. But you have skills especially as a veteran but especially as a special operator that employers want, which is stress management, team building, show up on time, loyalty, things like that. And they'll hire. And I talk to a lot of guys that want to get out, but they -- they'd rather go to combat than fill out a resume. Because at least combat makes sense. So what we do with Your Grateful Nation is we find out what line of work they want. It's individualized. Find out what they want. Where they want to live. We'll find that company. Get them a mentor. Put them through a nine-month program. And then they get placed in their second career. And it's -- the best email I get every other day -- you know, we placed Staff Sergeant Jones with this job with Fox Sports. Or we did this, and this guy is working at Merrill Lynch. And having the families -- the wives at some of the events we have, they'll just say, we couldn't have done this -- our family could not have done this without Your Grateful Nation. It's the best feeling. It's my passion --

GLENN: I'll tell you, the servicemen that I know -- and everybody has -- well, not a Bowe Bergdahl. But every -- you know, every profession has dirtbags in it. But there is a higher percentage of honor and integrity, I think, in the armed forces than any other --

ROBERT: Oh, no doubt about it. And the one thing you can't teach in college, that they said the military guys have is loyalty. They're so loyal. And, honestly, Your Grateful Nation started as, let's help the vets get jobs. Now it's, do you want to make your company better? We'll give you someone to --

GLENN: Are we still -- is the Navy that you went into, in '96, is it still the Navy that it -- I mean, a lot of parents that listen to this program are very concerned, especially over the last eight years. But they wonder what the rot has been. We've -- you know, we've taken out just war theory. I mean, we've changed fundamentally.

ROBERT: They -- a lot of the social experimentations affected it quite a bit. A lot of the verbiage -- like they said -- my favorite word, and I even use it in the book is shipmate. I love the word shipmate. They took it out of boot camp because it's derogatory. You can't call people shipmate. I love that term.

GLENN: Why is it derogatory?

ROBERT: They changed it to sea warrior.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. Sea warrior.

ROBERT: I mean, that's just -- that's again hiding from the big elephant dungarees in the room. Come on.

GLENN: Oh, my gosh.

ROBERT: I mean, as far as the other stuff, there are places you don't need the military to test social experiments. I mean, should there be women in combat? Well, we've had women in combat. Should there be gays in the military? We have had gays in the military. Nobody cared. But the media wanted to make a big thing out of it. A big political thing. Said, yeah, they're here. They're doing fine. Why do we need to -- morale is so big in the military. In units in combat, you need to have morale high to succeed. And when you start putting nonsensical baggage on, it wears on the morale. There's no reason for it.

GLENN: Who is it we had in the last couple of weeks that was talking about the -- you know, all of the restrictions put on our military that, you know, it's --

ROBERT: Rules of engagement.

GLENN: Rules of engagement are just insane.

ROBERT: Yeah, that's a tough one. People shouldn't be wondering if they're going to go to jail for taking a shot when it's -- I had a -- a thought though, since we're experimenting. The person who is in an office typing up the rules of engagement, you should have someone shooting at them while they're typing.

(laughter)

How are you going to defend yourself? You sit there and type --

GLENN: The operator is the name of the book. Firing the shots that killed Osama bin Laden and my years as a SEAL team warrior.

Robert O'Neill writes it in a way that you are standing there behind and seeing everything and feeling everything that he felt. The Operator is the name of the book. And his charity, if you want to get involved, is YourGratefulNation.org. YourGratefulNation.org.

Thank you so much.

ROBERT: Thank you for having me.

GLENN: Appreciate it. You bet.

RADIO

Will Medicaid cuts KILL Americans? Glenn reveals the FACTS!

Democrats claim that the Big, Beautiful Bill will take Medicaid and Medicare away from many Americans and even “kill” people. But is any of this true? Glenn Beck and Stu Burguiere review just the facts and explain who’s actually affected by the changes.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Can I address some of the hyperbole around the big, beautiful bill, just a little bit.

If there's anything in the big, beautiful bill to worry about, it's the increase in spending.

Because the spending ourself into oblivion is an actual threat.

To the country. But that's not what anybody is talking about. What everybody seems to be talking about is the tax cuts. Which were already there. Or the tax cuts like no tax for tips. Which you would think the party of the little people. You know, the Democrats. Would all be for. But they're not.

Because they're not party of the little people anymore. And those had to be offset.

Okay. Offset. By what?

Well, by cutting spending. But cutting what spending?

Not cutting spending. Let me just say this. If I said, you know, I made $250,000 a year. And this year, we were going to spend $300,000.
Okay?

And you would say, immediately, Glenn. You can't do that.

And I would say, I've been doing that for 30 years. Okay. You might say, the bank is not going to give a loan.

But then if I came to you and said, yeah. I'm spending $300,000 a year. And my wife and I make 250 or 200,000 a year. But, you know, next year, I was going to spend $500,000.

Did you get a raise? No. I didn't get a raise. I still make 250,000 dollars a year between my wife and I.

But I'm going to spend 500 and not 300. And then somebody came in, like an accountant with some muscle.

And they said, Glenn, you cannot spend $500,000 a year!

Would it make sense if I went back to spending 300, not 200, which I had.

But 300, which I had been spending every year, would it make sense to you to -- for me to say, my children are now going to starve? My children are now going to starve.

Look at the austerity program that I am on.

My gosh, they just -- no. They didn't cut anything. They must cut thinking.

They cut the increase inning spending.

That's what they cut.

And, Stu, could you please explain Medicare.

I mean, all of the people. I know they warned us.

I didn't believe the death squads would actually go out.

And, you know, they want these people off Medicare so badly.

Or Medicaid.

They just sent out death squads. Trump is not waiting for them to die, because he's not waiting for them to get their prescriptions now he just wants them slaughtered in the street.

STU: Yeah, that's the efficiency of the Trump administration. He wants these people dead so badly, he's just killing them in the streets. Actually, no, none of that is happening.

And the Medicaid cuts as you point out, are largely cuts to future increases that have not occurred.

The biggest chunk of this is the work requirements. You've heard this, Glenn.

And, you know, I went through this. And I was like, this can't possibly be what they mean.

I said, wait a minute. When they say work requirement cuts, what does that mean?

So I dove into it a little bit. Basically, what they're saying, you, if you're an able-bodied adult, so that does not include old people, does not include people who are sick and can't work. And it also does not include people who have small children, even if they are able-bodied.

And when I say small, I mean 12 and under. So if you have a 12-year-old. You're completely exempt from this.

But able-bodied adults.

GLENN: Okay. On people in wheelchairs.

STU: No. Gosh, again, I know this is tough. Yeah, this is where it gets difficult.

GLENN: Wait. I'm having a hard time following this. What now?.

STU: So you're an able-bodied adult, that does not have small children.

GLENN: No small children.

STU: You would be required to get Medicaid, to work 20 hours a week.

Now, you might --

GLENN: Twenty hours a week.

STU: Or 80 hours a month.

GLENN: Or 80 hours a month.

That's almost half a full-time job.

STU: Now, you might say to yourself. And this is actually true.

Some people can't get jobs. Right?

I'm sure, there are people trying to get part-time jobs. And maybe can't get them.

Those people will just lose their Medicaid. Well, as you may understand.

Of course not.

Because what you have to do then is go through a process, that you're basically telling them, you're attempting to get a job. Or you're volunteering somewhere, to meet that requirement.

So basically, you have to fill out -- yeah. It's like unemployment.

You have to at least fill out some paperwork here.

GLENN: It's the exact opposite.

Let me see if I have this right.

It's the exact opposite of unemployment which we've had forever.

Which if you're looking for a job, but can't get it. You can still have unemployment.

But it's the exact opposite. Right?

Especially if you're nursing sextuplets.

STU: Again, you're not very close to the truth.

You're a little bit off on this one.

GLENN: No. Huh!

STU: By the way, Glenn, you might say to yourself, wait. How is that a Medicaid cut?

Because they're not cutting anyone's eligibility here. Unless they don't want to meet the requirement.

Of course, there's always been requirements to all of these programs.

So meeting the requirements have always been part of getting on to Medicaid.

This requirement, if you decide basically not to do it. And not participate. And not fill out the paperwork.

Then, yes. You will lose your Medicaid coverage.

What they're saying, hold on. All right.

GLENN: No. I just want to make sure I have it right.

STU: Yes.

GLENN: If you are blind, you're deaf.

STU: No. Again, no.

GLENN: You have no friends, and you can't get out of the house, and you've been on Medicaid, somehow or another, you signed up for that. But now, you don't even know, because you can't hear the news. You certainly can't fill out a form. Because you have no eyes.

STU: Hmm.

GLENN: They just come in and rip your Medicaid away?

STU: No. None of what you said is accurate.

Though, it is calm considering some of the accusations -- comparisons made bit left right now.

But, yeah.

So if you are an able-bodied adult that decides, you know what, I don't feel like filling out the paperwork, or I don't feel like going to job interviews, or I don't feel like volunteering, then yes. You could lose -- but that's what they're saying the cuts are.

They think 317 billion dollars worth of people will not bother doing those things. For whatever reason. Maybe because they had more money than they said. Maybe because they're lazy.

Maybe because -- I'm sure there's some case where some -- I don't know.

I can't think of the case.

GLENN: Blind person.

STU: Because the ailments are covered here.

But, yes. Maybe it's some particular skin color. Then they would reject you.

I don't know.

And it's not just that. There are other cuts. For example, some of the cuts are, they're eliminate duplicate Medicaid enrollment.

If you happen to have Medicaid.

GLENN: I can't double-dip.

STU: In two different states. They're going to try to stop you from having it in two states.

And instead, make you have it one state. Uh-huh.

GLENN: Hold on just one second.

I have two legs. I have two arms. I have two eyes. I have two nostrils. I have two ears.

I can't have two Medicaid coverages. It's insane!

STU: I know.

It's really, really brutal.

GLENN: I have two kidneys. I can only have one kidney now, you know, repaired?

STU: Now --

GLENN: Is that what you're saying?

STU: That's not what I'm saying. But, yes. I'm sure that's what's being reported out there by Dana Bash.

Another one, I will give you here, Glenn. They talked about immigrants.

You know, immigrants getting on their Medicaid cut. Now, this is tough. What this bill does, I want you to hold on to your hat here, Glenn.

GLENN: Okay.

STU: If you have green card holders and other certain immigrants, some will lose their coverage. Or actually, sorry, eligibility will -- retain for those people.

Certain other immigrants may lose their coverage. The current law says, all who are lawfully present.

That will kick in after a -- how many year waiting period?

Let me guess, it's a five-year waiting period.

So it will be the next president who has to deal with this, when future Congress will just put it right back in. And it's not a savings at all.

And then you have Medicaid death checks. They're going to require --

GLENN: They're checking on whether your debt? Look at this! It's crazy.

STU: It's brutal. It really is.

GLENN: You're going to kick all of the immigrants off in five years.

STU: No.

GLENN: And then you're checking to see if old people are dead!

When will you leave these people alone?

STU: I know. So, anyway, we can go through this stuff all day. But as you point out, most of this stuff is not at all, what the left is saying it is.

It's not the desperate Medicaid cuts that are going to ruin everybody's lives. A lot of them are just really common sense stuff, making sure you don't have them in two states. I don't know what the positive argument is for that. But they'll make it.

GLENN: Well, they don't have one. That's why they don't make it about that.

RADIO

Liz Wheeler demands Trump FIRE Bondi after Epstein list debacle

The Department of Justice and FBI are now claiming that there NEVER was any Epstein client list and nobody else needs to be charged. But what about Attorney General Pam Bondi’s previous claim that the list was on her desk?! BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler, who had been given one of Bondi’s ill-fated “Epstein Files” binders, joins Glenn Beck to discuss how the MAGA movement should react to the claims made by Bondi, Kash Patel, and Dan Bongino.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Liz Wheeler. Liz wrote to me early today. Let me see if I can -- may I quote you here, Liz?

LIZ: Yes, you may. Thanks for having me, Glenn.

GLENN: Okay. Yeah. You bet. She said, give me one good reason why I shouldn't scream for Pam Bondi to be fired today? And this was at 5 o'clock in the morning. And I said, I'm sleepy. But I don't think I can.

I don't think I can give you a reason not to -- not to call for her firing today. But I want you to explain, why do you feel this way?

LIZ: It's not something that I say lightly. I didn't say it immediately after the White House, Epstein binder debacle. And I want to very prudently and judiciously make this case to you today and to make this case to President Trump too. Because Pam Bondi has become a liability to her administration, despite her loyalty in other areas. So let's start with the announcement from the Department of Justice last night.

A lot of us have a lot of questions about this announcement. It just doesn't ring true with a lot of us. We see a lot of evidence before our eyes that contradicts what we're being told without evidence to believe by the FBI and the Department of Justice. And it grates on us.

Because like you mentioned, we are friends with Kash Patel and Dan Bongino.

They're the good guys. We trust them.

And yet, we have to use our critical thinking faculties and look at the evidence before our eyes.

So it smells fishy. You'll notice it says nothing about whether Jeffrey Epstein was an intelligence asset.

Which, as you mentioned, Alex Acosta, the attorney who cut the sweetheart deal originally with Epstein. Said he was, before Accosta's emails mysteriously disappeared. So we have questions about that.

There are also outstanding, important questions about Kash Patel and Dan Bongino's definitive pronouncement, that Epstein killed himself.

I'm sorry. I don't think the video that they released proves definitively that they were stating that case.

GLENN: Why?

LIZ: Because it does not show what's happening in the cell. It just shows the cell door. We don't actually see him kill himself.

GLENN: Right. But we know that nobody came in.

LIZ: Through that door.

GLENN: Where are they going to go true, the little bars? Little drag la? A little bat.

LIZ: I don't know what the internal cell looks like. I don't know what they have. I don't know if they have fire escape routes. I don't know if they have adjoining doors. I don't know if they have emergency exits. I don't know if that video was doctored or not.

I don't know enough about that, to simply take that one piece of evidence.

GLENN: Okay. So that's a good point.

Just show us the room. Show us what's inside the room.

LIZ: Yes. We need more evidence.

GLENN: That's reasonable.

LIZ: One piece of evidence.

It's not enough.

GLENN: Yeah.

LIZ: The other thing, I wonder with Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are relying too much on the FBI's prior investigation to the FBI of old is a reliable narrator. I don't know who conducted those investigations, or if it was done soundly. I doubt it was done soundly.

GLENN: So may I just interject here.

LIZ: Yes.

GLENN: I talked to Dan Bongino a few weeks ago about this off-air. And, Glenn, we are turning over every stone. We are going to get to the bottom of it.

We are -- so, I mean, he led me to believe that, and I believed him. And I still do.

That he was using new resources. Opening the investigation in -- in a new way. Following it closely.

And I do believe Dan Bongino is one of the good guys.

LIZ: I do too. And I've been told the same thing by high-ranking officials in the FBI. Who I trust. They're trustworthy people.

I do think, that it might not be possible at this point, to piece together everything, because we know there have been reports of evidence, destruction.

So my issue with that definitive statement was the definitive nature of it.

This 100 percent happened this way. Epstein killed himself. Instead of saving, we don't have enough evidence to piece this together, or the evidence we have points to this.

All that being said, though, I want to talk about what happened last night.

Because this brings to us attorney general Pam Bondi, who just months ago said she had the Epstein client list on her desk.

When I went back to look at that video, the clip of her on Fox News, again, this morning, to make sure that there was not context that I was lacking, that there was not bungled phraseology, maybe nerves being on the air.

I went back and listened to it. She said definitively, she had the Epstein client list on her desk.

Now, fast forward to yesterday, she says that it doesn't exist, that they don't have it.

That is a really big problem. If I'm president today --

GLENN: Okay. Let me play this, from Bondi. This is back in February. Here is the actual statement she made.

Listen.

VOICE: The DOJ may be releasing the list of Epstein's clients. Will that really happen?

VOICE: It's sitting on my desk right now, to review.

That's been a directive by President Trump. I'm reviewing that. I'm reviewing JFK files. MLK files. That's all in the process of being reviewed, because that was done at the directive of the president from all of these agencies.

VOICE: So have you seen anything, that you said, oh, my gosh?

VOICE: Not yet.

VOICE: Okay. Well, we'll check back with you.

GLENN: Okay. So now let me take you back to Kash Patel. Because something similar was said to me. Here he is. Cut 12.

So who has Jeffrey Epstein's?

VOICE: Black book? FBI.

GLENN: But who?

VOICE: Oh, that's under direct control of the director of the FBI. Just like the manifesto from the Nashville school shooting. The Catholic school. We still haven't seen that, right?

It's not the Nashville police or PD saying, we don't want this out. The FBI airmailed into that operation and said, this is not getting out. Because they do that because this is another government gangster operation.

All these local law enforcement communities get funding from the DOJ and FBI from local programs. And if you don't cooperate, you're not getting your million dollars for this.

That's a lot of money from these local districts. That's how they play the game. That's why you don't have a black book.

GLENN: Because the black book, it's not just sitting. That's Hoover power times ten.

VOICE: And to me, that's a thing I think President Trump should run on. On day one, roll out the black book.

And not just that, on day one, all the text messages and communications we were told were deleted. On day one, play the rest of the video of the pipe bomber.

You know, he needs -- one of the reforms I talk about in government gangsters.

Is you need a central node to be continuously declassifying. This is another thing they do. They overclassify.

They are not telling you -- as a former number two in the IC, they overclassify 50 percent of the stuff there to protect the Deep State.

Oh, no.

You can't see that. Nothing to see here.

Gina was a master at it. Of doing it. And we haven't seen half of the Russiagate report we wrote. Still under lock and key.

On how the ICA was originally constructed. We went -- we put 10,000 man-hours against John Brennan's team that did it.

And we found out why they came up with their bogus conclusions. We couldn't sell it with the world.

Because we couldn't talk about it. And the government cancers came in and buried it.

All of these things, there needs to be a continuing central power whether it's the White House or off-site that says, every request that comes in.
Just right out the door. As long as it's not awe major threat to national security.

VOICE: Liz, they're both very clear.

It existed. But Pam Bondi did not say, she had any names in it.

She kind of made me feel like she hadn't really looked at it.

Kash Patel gave me the impression, he had seen it. Or at least he knew about it.

So how do we go from here?

VOICE: Yes. Listen.

People care deeply about the Epstein files because there was a grisly crime that we know for a fact that was committed.

Epstein was convicted of that.

It wasn't speculative. He was convicted of that. People feel that there's evidence of a cover-up. Not -- we're not inventing a conspiracy. There's evidence of a cover-up of this crime.

Pam Bondi as attorney general has exacerbated this trust. And it gives me no pleasure to say this. Because I like to give the benefit of the doubt to people that are on our side.

But going back to that day in the White House, this February. I haven't told this part of the story before.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, when we met with her. We weren't at the White House to meet with her. We just met with her while she was there.

Pam Bondi bragged to us about making that cover sheet on the binder, the one that read the most transparent administration in history.

She said, she had made it. She had printed it. She was proud of it. She placed it on that binder.

Glenn, to call that a severe lack of judgment would be the understatement of the year. There is no way, in my mind, and I've tried every way to Sunday, to square that behavior with the announcement that we got last night with the Department of Justice.

Pam Bondi told us at the time, she said, I've requested the Epstein files, the files in the binder, were the ones given to me. Nothing was in them, she told us at the time. Then a whistle-blower told her, she told us. And said the FDNY was hiding other files. That's the story she had told us, that there's been a Deep State cover-up. So at the time, after we were given these binders, we waited. Right? You give your side the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Pam Bondi will come up with the goods, even though the rollout was botched to say the least.

But she -- this is another thing I have not discussed publicly before. She said, she had not seen the FDNY documents at the time that she was telling us about them.

I asked her directly that day in the White House. When she said, a whistle-blower told us about these truckloads of FDNY documents. I said, have you seen them? She said no, she sent the request and they're brining them to her.

So contextualizing all of this, suddenly this seems like unforgivable behavior.

How could she give the American people -- not just me. I don't care about how this impacts me. How can she give the American people those binders that contain nothing, while at the same time, bragging about the cover sheet that she made.

The most transparent administration in history. And tell us that the FDNY had the real goods, that the binder was just proof of a Deep State cover-up. That was the real story she told us. Only now to say, sorry, there's actually nothing.

So it leaves us with this situation. What are the options? The options are, well, was she herself set up by some Deep State FBI officials trying to make a fool of her? It's possible, maybe even probable.

GLENN: Possible.

LIZ: But here's the thing, if you're smart, if you're savvy, if you're sharp enough to be Attorney General of the United States, you verify such information.

You don't assume its veracity and publicize it for clicks. And that's what she did.

So then we get to the point, that we think, okay. Well, what does this say about her judgment?

Is she just click thirsty? Is she wanting to be a Fox News star? Did she get out over her skis, trying to make news, being a mega champion with those binders, that maybe she had not verified the contents of, and she definitely hadn't verified the contents of the FDNY truckload. You can't square this announcement with the binders. With the binders in February, unless you allow for the idea that Pam Bondi could be operating in a way that is unacceptable, when on Fox News. Said she had a client list on her desk to review, when she hadn't looked at the documents.

And was just saying that to be a television star. I say this. In somewhat sorrowfully. If I'm President Trump, I would not tolerate this behavior anymore. She's become a liability to the administration. I think the administration is probably just now coming to the realization of how much goodwill this whole debacle has cost them with their voters.

And Pam Bondi is not worth it. She's a liability. It's time to move on.

RADIO

The INCREDIBLE TRUE Story of Benjamin Franklin

Was Benjamin Franklin the greatest and most modern Founding Father? This July 4th week, “The Greatest American” author Mark Skousen joins Glenn Beck to tell the incredible and true story of Benjamin Franklin.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Dr. Mark Skousen, friend of the program, friend of mine. America's economist.

He is -- he has written a new book on the greatest American and the greatest American, he says is Ben Franklin. And I tend to agree with him. He's at least in the top five greatest Americans. Welcome to the program, Mark. How are you?

MARK: I'm doing well. We're out here in the Mediterranean Sea right now on a cruise, but isn't it great technology that even Ben Franklin would love?

GLENN: You know, I don't think people really understand the genius of Ben Franklin. I mean, there's this great article in the times of London.

I don't remember when. But he was going back to London. He was going to challenge the king.

And he was going back. And they said, don't let his boat come in to dock.

Because he's been working with electricity, and he has a ray gun, and he will vaporize, you know, all of London.

I mean, he was -- he was the Elon Musk of his day, but he was almost more magical, because people didn't understand it.

Back then. What did you find in writing this book about Ben Franklin, that you think most people just don't know?

MARK: Well, this is the thing. So when I wrote the greatest American, I thought to myself, everybody -- lots of books have been written on his biography.

So what I did was I came up with 80 chapters on how he is the most modern of all the Founders. And how he could talk about the modern issues of today, whether it's trade or taxes or inflation or war. Discrimination. Inequality.

I have a chapter on each one of these, in the greatest American.

And, you know, he was a Jack-of-all-trades.
And the master of all, on top of it!

So one of the things I thought would be really cool, if you put my book, on every coffee table in America, and people came in to visit, they would look at this book. And there might be an argument, as you say, as to who is the greatest American. Whether it's George Washington or Elon Musk, or what have you.

GLENN: Whatever.

MARK: When they see the picture of Ben Franklin, they sit there and nod their head. And say, wow. This is the guy I want to sit down with and talk to.

And have a beer with.

Because if you sat with some of the other Founders, they would get in an argument with you. Or they would refuse to answer the question. Or what have you.

But Franklin was willing to talk to a janitor, as well as the king of France. And that's pretty unique.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah. He could.

He was an amazing guy. So tell me, in your research of him, you know, you always hear that, oh, Ben Franklin was a notorious womanizer, and everything else.

And he abandoned his wife. Deborah? Was that her name?

MARK: Yes. Deborah. That's correct.

GLENN: Did that -- what's true, or what's not true about that?

MARK: So he certainly was the most liberal-minded when it came to the sexual revolution.

That's why I say, he's the most modern of the Founders. Because he was not prudish like John and Abigail Adams, who thought he was a reprobate. And sinner. And not a churchgoer. And stuff like that.

GLENN: Right.

MARK: So, yes. He was -- the ladies loved him. And he loved the ladies.

There's no question about that, that he was a bit of a playboy. And, in fact, he even admits in his autobiography, of having an illegitimate child, William. But then he settled down. He married Deborah. And, yes, Deborah and him, they did separate because -- and it was really more her fault than his, because when he went to London as a London agent, she had extreme aversion to going out on this -- the seas. It was a dangerous time period.

So it's kind of like people don't like to fly on airplanes today. So they did grow apart. There's no question about that.

But they maintained their -- their love for each other.

And, as a matter of fact, when Franklin died, he's buried right next to Deborah. So I think that's an indication of their -- their love and so forth. But they were very different personalities. She was very focused on -- on more of the home issues. She was not a public intellectual.

She would not feel comfortable in the same conversations that Franklin would have with scientists.

And with public thinkers, and stuff like that. So they definitely differed in their personality.

GLENN: The -- the story about his son William is one of the saddest chapters.

I mean, you know, Thomas Paine kind of looked at him as a father figure. And he -- you know, Ben Franklin did have a son, William, as you said. And they -- they had a really bad falling out.

Can you quickly tell that story?

MARK: Yeah. So I have a chapter on that very issue. Because who were his enemies, and he did have a number of enemies, including John Adams, at one point. But in the case of William, he, Franklin, arranged for William to be the governor of New Jersey. And he maintained his loyalty. He was a loyalist. Billy was throughout the American Revolution!

And at the end of the American Revolution, or during the American Revolution, Franklin writes his son and he said, it's one thing to -- we can differ on various issues.

But when you actually raise money, raise armaments to attack me, this was beyond the pale.

This is not something that you should have done. And then at the end of his letter, he says, this is a disagreeable subject!

I drop it. So you can feel that emotion, that anger.

And, yes. He removed him from -- from his will.

So there -- there -- Franklin got along with almost everyone.

And I have a whole chapter on how to deal in the greatest American. How to deal with enemies and be how to make your enemies, your friends.

But this was one example where he just couldn't cross over and forgive him. For what the -- for what we had done.

GLENN: I don't think --

CHIP: Just like you are saying.

GLENN: I think I would have a hard time doing that too if my son was raising funds and military against me. It would be kind of hard to forgive.

Mark, thank you so much for your work. It's always good to talk to you.

The name of the book is by Mark Skousen. And it is called The Greatest American. It's all about Ben Franklin. If you don't know anything about Ben Franklin, you will fall in love with him. You will absolutely fall in love with him. Mark Skousen is the author. The name of the book again, The Greatest American.

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